Ethical Safeguards & Behavioral Psychology Competencies: A Framework for Computer Science Capstone Project Design

Before the technological revolution, persuasion occurred in a transactional manner in public forms or academic settings. Persuasive design now enables a unidirectional process through mobile apps and other digital media. However, sometimes persuasive design may translate to consumer risk or inadvertent outcomes. Several studies have shown persuasive design's negative and potentially harmful impacts in apps such as social media and gaming. In the overly competitive digital mobile apps market, app design engineers are steered by business drivers to attract and highly-engage users. Within this context, app designers may intentionally adopt psychologically based design elements to drive higher levels of user-engagement. As evident from several apps recently analyzed in research and legal hearings, ethical considerations of apps influence on user behaviors, choice, and wellbeing may be eclipsed in favor of business outcomes. In this study, we examine how by utilizing ethical safeguards and psychological competencies can inform innovative app design to influence human behavior to optimize consumer wellness in a targeted fashion. To this end, we propose a research collaboration between computer science and psychology to promote student understanding and incorporation of design factors that could influence user well-being. This work utilizes three main principle persuasive design, choice architecture, and participatory design to define a usable framework. We argue that knowledge of brain-behavior principles such as behavior change mechanisms, the integration of bottom-up and top-down processing, and the inclusion of measurement capabilities for target behaviors could support the development of efficacious and engaging apps via positive and ethically appropriate mechanisms. Our proposed collaborative model integrates guidelines for ethical app development with the ultimate goal of giving computer science students a framework for understanding app design as a structure for consumer choice architecture. We target Computer Science undergraduate students enrolled in the capstone design project at the Texas A&M University System (TAMUC) – RELLIS Campus. To complete the capstone project, students enroll in two consecutive courses, CSCI 359 (Fall) and CSCI 440 (Spring), where they work to produce a software product (app). The capstone walks students through ideation, planning, design, implementation, and testing of their software (app) products. The framework and tools developed as part of this study are evaluated for effectiveness through discussions and student reflections.